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Earlier, we reported on the shooting of Reb. Gabrielle Giffords who has undergone surgery. Incredibly, federal judge was killed in the same shooting.

The shooter Jared Loughner’s (aka Jared Laughner) alleged YouTube and MySpace accounts suggested a manifesto before his Arizona shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today. While the Facebook, MySpace and YouTube accounts online reportedly are all identified as belonging to Loughner, they have yet to be confirmed by news as of midday Saturday.

Phoenix news reports Saturday that Jared Loughner on his alleged MySpace and/or Facebook accounts wrote “goodbye friends” as his final message. On an alleged YouTube account (Classitup10), Loughner is believed to have posted a series of videos with peculiar messages, reports the Phoenix News Times.

In one video the author “makes bizarre references to the ” “illiterate” constituency in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.”

Jerry Markon writes in the Washington Post:

John. M. Roll, the federal judge killed Saturday in the Tucson shooting that critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), has been at the center of the state's complicated political battle over immigration.

In February 2009, Roll received hundreds of threats after he allowed a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against a rancher to go forward. "They cursed him out, threatened to kill his family, said they'd come and take care of him. They really wanted him dead," a law enforcement official told The Washington Post in May 2009.

Threats against federal judges and prosecutors nationwide have been soaring in recent years. There is no indication he was the gunman's target, and witness accounts describe the shooter as firing at Giffords first.

U.S. marshals put Roll, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, under 24-hour protection for about a month. They guarded his home in a secluded area just outside Tucson, screening his mail and escorting him to court, to the gym and even to Mass.

Roll told the Post in May 2009 that "any judge who goes through this knows it's a stressful situation" and that he and his family were grateful for the protection.

More than a year after the threats against Roll, Arizona passed what is considered the nation's toughest immigration law, triggering a fierce national debate over illegal immigration and a lawsuit against the state by the Justice Department.

Roll, a Pennsylvania native, has served as the chief U.S. District Judge in Arizona since 2006. He is a former Arizona state appeals court judge and a former assistant U.S. attorney in Arizona, focusing on prosecuting drug cases, according to his judicial biography on Judgepedia.

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was alive but in surgery at a hospital Saturday after a shooting that also injured at least nine other people, a hospital spokeswoman said. Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona today at a public event outside a grocery store.

A spokesman for the Pima County sheriff says that at least 12 people were shot, with at least 6 fatalities. The Tucson Citizen reports that Rep. Giffords was "shot point blank in the head."

Rep. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, was first elected to the House in 2006. She represents the state's 8th Congressional District in Tucson. She has worked for comprehensive immigration reform.

Slaten said there were nine other shooting victims at the hospital with serious injuries.

The shooter was apparently taken into custoy, and some reports signal that he was motivated by the Tea Party.

Last March, Giffords was one of 10 House Democrats who were the subject of harassment over their support for the national health care overhaul. At the time, the front door of Giffords' Tucson office had been shattered in an early morning incident.

King Dethroned from Immigration Subcommittee Chair, but GOP Policy Remains the Same

Washington – The news that Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) is the Republicans’ choice to lead the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee – passing over outlandish and outspoken anti-immigrant zealot Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and instead installing him as Vice-Chairman in the process – is surprising to many. However, the choice actually reveals that the new Republican majority in the House is still bent on pursuing a costly and ineffective mass-deportation approach to immigration policy.

According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, “Steve King was dethroned because even the House Republican leadership must realize that comparing immigrants to livestock and suggesting we keep them out with an electric fence is offensive to Latino voters. But, he's simply been demoted from king to prince, and together, with Lamar Smith and Elton Gallegly, will lead the deportation caucus in the House. Until the Republican Party actually changes position on immigration, their ugly faces will still define them.”

Though some may interpret King’s being passed over as chairperson to be a sign that the Republican caucus understands the link between immigration extremism and political dangers, the choice of Rep. Gallegly is a curious one through that lens. In fact, Gallegly’s voting record on immigration issues shows that he fits neatly alongside Lamar Smith and Steve King as an advocate to force the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented workers and their family members. The Republican Party will have to actually learn that its policies on immigration are the problem, not its spokespeople.

PHOENIX – The National Day Laborer Organizing Network and a coalition of civil rights organizations today asked a federal court to prohibit Arizona from enforcing two key sections of SB 1070 targeting day labor, pending a final court ruling on the these provisions’ constitutionality. The law creates new criminal offenses, ostensibly relating to traffic safety, that apply only to individuals engaging in or receiving employment solicitation speech. According to the coalition, these provisions cause irreparable harm to day laborers and those who seek to employ them by curtailing their First Amendment rights.

The civil rights coalition includes the American Civil Liberties Union, MALDEF, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) (a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice), ACLU of Arizona, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The law firms of Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Altshuler Berzon LLP, and Roush, McCracken, Guerrero, Miller & Orgtega are acting as co-counsel in the case.

The following statements can be attributed to members of the coalition, as listed below.

Chris Newman, Legal Director and General Counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network: “Free speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment are vital to our democracy, and they belong as much to day laborers as they do to authors, corporations, and politicians. Other federal judges that have examined similar anti-day labor laws have found them to be unconstitutional, and we are confident these sections of SB 1070 will be enjoined and ultimately struck down as well."

Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center: “Arizona’s attempt to prohibit peaceful efforts to seek day labor employment throughout the state is not only illegal, but also immoral during an economic downturn. Because of these unconstitutional restrictions on free speech, the families and communities that rely on day laborers’ economic contributions suffer enormous and unnecessary hardship.”

Omar Jadwat, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project: ""These provisions of Arizona’s racial profiling law improperly single out and punish employment solicitation speech inviolation of the First Amendment. The state law's violation of fundamental constitutional principles in order to express hostility to day laborers and immigrants is both shortsightedand doomed to legal failure.""

Victor Viramontes, MALDEF National Senior Counsel:"Day Laborers have a right to peacefully seek work in order to feed their families and themselves. The First Amendment guarantees them the right to express their desire for work without fear of being harassed or arrested."

Daniel Pochoda, ACLU of Arizona legal director: "This provision is an unconstitutional attempt to further the agendas of anti-immigrant legislators in Arizona. Singling out work solicitation speech from all other types of speech belies the stated concern with traffic problems and demonstrates an intent to target Latino day laborers."

Julie Su, litigation director for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center: "All workers have a First Amendment right to seek work, particularly in public areas. The unconstitutional provisions of SB 1070 have severely violated workers' free speech rights and restricted their ability to earn a living."

Oakland (California) Mayor Jean Quan walked through the city on her inauguration day. She is the first Chinese American woman elected mayor. She started at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center in Chinatown. She then stopped at the Asian Resource Gallery, which featured an exhibit of posters curated by Greg Morizumi, from the Third World Strike at the University of California and political movements in the Asian American community since the 1960s. Mayor Quan designed one of the posters in the exhibit, protesting the beating death of Vincent Chin.

During her walk, she visited Lincoln Elementary School, in the heart of Chinatown. Quan was previously a member of the Oakland School Board, and students excited by her visit made small speeches and sang for her. Kindergarten-age children looked on through the school windows.

Her walk took her down 17th Street, where storeowners have been hit hard by the economic recession. One storeowner hugged her, as the mayor urged Oakland residents to support local businesses by shopping in the city.

The last stop on Mayor Quan's walk was the Leamington Hotel, where her father worked as a cook. There she was honored by the leaders of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, the International Longhsore and Warehouse Union, and other local unions, along with the longshore union's drill team. Mayor Quan's husband, Floyd Huen, her son and daughter, and state Assembly member Sandre Swanson, one of her strongest supporters, all walked with her together with dozens of well-wishers.

Genomic Science, Ancestry, and Racial Construction: New Complexity in the American Racial Order Jennifer Hochschild Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Harvard College Professor Tuesday, January 25 2PM

States, Migration, and International Cooperation: Can there be a global migration regime Randall Hansen Canada Research Chair in Political Science University of Toronto Tuesday, March 1 2PM

~All seminars will be held in the Eleanor Roosevelt Administration Building conference room, #115.

These seminars are open to all members of the UCSD community, as well as faculty and students from other universities and the general public. For directions to CCIS, please visit our website. For further information, please contact Ana Minvielle at aminvielle@ucsd.edu or 858-822-4447.

"Beyond Exclusion: A Review of Peter J. Spiro’s 'Beyond Citizenship'" In a disorienting world where many non-Americans (and Americans) no longer recognize or identify with the United States, Peter J. Spiro’s "Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization" intervenes with a timely and provocative discussion of the issues, problems, and dilemmas that accompany twenty-first century American identity, and its articulation in U.S. citizenship law. In 163 pages of learned but accessible text, Spiro’s rich and erudite work describes the history and future trajectory of key aspects of U.S. citizenship law, American national identity, and their interaction. Spiro’s work is particularly interested in giving a descriptive account of citizenship law’s contributions to the “eroding foundation of the national community." And while most of the broad themes that Spiro engages with in his book are intriguing, he makes a number of particular arguments in his work concerning the similarities between religious and national community that are especially provocative. As I argue in this Review, however, Spiro’s arguments about religious and national communities’ shared need to exclude outsiders and also insist upon internal conformity in order to become “meaningful” communities are often quite simplistic. This is especially so where Spiro premises his arguments on unsupportable generalizations about religion writ large, and under-theorizes the foundational ideas of “community” and “meaningfulness.” In fact, Spiro ultimately undermines his ambitious and thought-provoking arguments connecting religious and national communities by relying on narrow and inaccurate accounts of what counts as a real or meaningful “religion” or “nation” in the first place. Ultimately, these problems undermine his overarching account concerning American community, including his account of how an over-inclusive U.S. citizenship regime has seriously diluted American national identity.

State Legislators Attempt to Turn Back Clock to Pre-Civil War Era,Attack Fundamental Constitutional Values

Washington, D.C. - Today, State Legislators for Legal Immigration (SLLI), a coalition of state legislators, revealed their plan to challenge the 14th Amendment and the Constitutional definition of citizenship. Claiming that they need to correct a "monumental misapplication of the 14th Amendment" and protect their states from the "illegal alien invasion," the legislators proposed model legislation intended to spark a new Supreme Court ruling to reinterpret the 14th Amendment.

The model legislation attempts to create a new definition of "state citizenship" and narrow the categories of people who would be citizens at birth: only children born to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen, national, or legal permanent resident would be considered citizens. The bill would also create a "state compact" requiring states to issue two different types of birth certificates: one for those considered "natural-born U.S. citizens" and another singling out those whom the state does not consider a citizen.

The following is a statement from Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council:

"The proposal presented today is clearly unconstitutional and an embarrassing distraction from the need to reform our nation's immigration laws. It constitutes a vicious assault on the U.S. Constitution and flies in the face of generations of efforts to expand civil rights. Moreover, it is an attack on innocent children born in the U.S. who would be confined to a new second-class citizenship and vulnerable to abuse and discrimination. While claiming to uphold the Constitution, these legislators have taken a clear stance against American values and principles. In the U.S. we have confirmed a tradition of liberty, equality and justice, where we are no more able to punish children for the actions of their parents than we are to pass titles of nobility down from one generation to the next.

"Denying citizenship to certain children born in the U.S. would not decrease unauthorized immigration; in fact it would increase the number of people in the U.S. without legal immigration status. Moreover, the impact of this misguided effort would be felt well beyond the undocumented population. Every American parent would have to prove the citizenship status of their children, requiring new documentation and a large government bureaucracy to sort through historical records, immigration documents, and international citizenship laws at taxpayer expense.

"We acknowledge that our immigration laws are badly broken, and we recognize that state and local legislators are frustrated by Congress's unwillingness to reform our immigration system. However, attacking constitutional citizenship is simply another distraction that moves us further away from addressing the real problems with our broken immigration system. Rather than challenging Congress to reinterpret the 14th amendment, we need to redouble the effort to reform our immigration laws."

Latino Immigrants and the U.S. Racial Order: How and Where Do They Fit In? By Reanne Franka, Ilana Redstone Akreshb and Bo Lua American Sociological Review (2010) For a copy of the paper, see Download Download[1]

How do Latino immigrants in the United States understand existing racial categories? And how does the existing U.S. racial order influence this understanding? Using data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), our analysis points to changes in how the U.S. racial order might operate in the future. We find that most Latino immigrants recognize the advantages of a White racial designation when asked to self-identify, but wider society is not often accepting of this White expansion. Our findings suggest that relatively darker-skinned Latino immigrants experience skin-color-based discrimination in the realm of annual income. Furthermore, Latinos who are most integrated into the United States are the most likely to opt out of the existing U.S. racial categorization scheme. We predict that a racial boundary is forming around some Latino immigrants: those with darker skin and those who have more experience in the U.S. racial stratification system.

It is time for the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting! This year the conference is in San Francisco. Click here to access the updated progam schedule. Here are some of the immigration-related programs scheduled:

Laurel S. Terry, Pennsylvania State University The Dickinson School of Law

One or more presenters was selected from a call for papers. Many students attend U.S. colleges and universities who are not U.S. citizens, and many of those students become faculty in the U.S. especially in the STEM disciplines (science, 53 Friday, January 7 technology, engineering, and mathematics). The citizenship of these individuals gives rise to numerous legal issues. This panel will address several of those issues both in the U.S. and abroad, including: understanding the increasing global mobility of university students and faculty; examining whether undocumented students in the U.S. should pay in-state or out-of-state tuition as disputed in current litigation in California and Kansas; and exploring how European Union countries are changing the ways in which they educate and license professionals across national borders. Business Meeting at Program Conclusion. 10:30

FRIDAY, JAN. 7 4:00-5:45 PM

Section on Children and the Law, Co-Sponsored by Sections on Family and Juvenile Law, Immigration Law and International Law Sutro, Second Floor Level, Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco Union Square

Our Children — The World's Children: The Effect of Globalization on Children (Papers to be published in the Whittier Journal of Child and Family Advocacy)

Moderator: William W. Patton, Whittier Law School

Speakers: Ann Laquer Estin, University of Iowa College of Law

David J. Gartner, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Shani King, University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law

Marcia A. Zug, University of South Carolina School of Law

One or more presenters was selected from a call for papers. The panelists will address the effect of globalization on children from a variety of perspectives. Papers were solicited from scholars in family and juvenile law, immigration and asylum law, international and comparative law, among other fields. Together, the panelists will shed light on the legal circumstances of children in the United States and abroad whose lives are increasingly impacted by movement of people, goods and wealth around the globe. Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.

During the past two decades there has been a surge in immigration detention. Today, the detention system is massive and growing. Although nominally a system of civil detention, it operates under norms developed for incarceration. Detainees are held in a sprawling complex of local jails, federal detention centers and private facilities and are routinely transferred between facilities. These detainees are processed through a variety of mechanisms. Some will appear before an immigration judge and may later pursue administrative appeals and judicial review. Others will face administrative removal orders or reinstatement of old removal orders by deportation officers with limited review. Still others will be encouraged to stipulate to removal while they are being held in custody. This panel will explore due process questions in this system of mass detention. The panelists will look at whether due process can be achieved without a right to counsel and whether there are reforms short of such a right that can improve due process. Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.

Read "Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment: Opponents of illegal immigration cannot claim to champion the rule of law and then propose policies that violate our Constitution" by James Ho, former Solicitor General of Texas.

Facts: Mr. Rosas –Castaneda a lawful permanent resident was convicted of attempted transportation for sale of an amount of marijuana weighting more than two pounds in violation of Arizona law ARS 13-1001,13-3405,13-3401, 13-601, 13-702, and 13-801. The Immigration Judge(IJ) found him deportable for a controlled substance crime, but found the record of conviction unclear as to whether the offence was an aggravated felony. The IJ asked Mr. Rosas-Castaneda to submit a copy of his criminal transcript but Rosas-Castaneda refused citing Sandoval-Lua v. Gonzales, 499 F. 3d 1121 (9th Cir. 2007) and argued that he met his burden for relief because the record of conviction did not conclusively prove that his offense constituted an aggravated felony. The IJ denied his application for cancelation of removal and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed ruling that the REAL ID modified Sandoval-Lua.

Holding: The Ninth Circuit found that Sandoval-Lua remained good law despite the enactment of the REAL ID. Sandoval-Lua held that under the modified categorical approach, the relevant burden of proof inquiry is whether the judicially noticeable documents establish that the alien’s conviction necessarily was for an aggravated felony. If the record does not establish that the alien was convicted of an aggravated felony, then the alien has carried his burden. The REAL ID act did not change the burden of proof for the modified categorical approach it merely codified the existing law. Therefore, the Real ID Act did not change Sandoval-Lua’s logic, holding, or applicability. Moreover the statutory language of 8 USC 1229(c)(4)(B) does not grant the IJ authority to demand the alien to supplement of record of conviction, but only to request corroboration of testimonial evidence. The Ninth Circuit went on to apply the modified categorical test to the record of conviction and agreed with the IJ’s determination that it was inconclusive and granted Mr. Rosas-Castaneda’s appeal. EQ

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution - the cornerstone of American civil rights - affirms that, with very few exceptions, all persons born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, regardless of their parents' citizenship. Over the years, however, several bills have been introduced that would deny U.S. citizenship to children whose parents are in the U.S. illegally or on temporary visas. As restrictionist groups and legislators continue in their attempts to restrict or repeal constitutional citizenship in State Houses and the U.S. Congress, it's important to remember that ending constitutional citizenship would be impractical, expensive, would not stop illegal immigration and above all, unconstitutional.

The Immigration Policy Center is providing a contact sheet of Constitutional, Civil Rights and other expert spokespersons on Citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the press as well as a range of resources presenting a strong case for maintaining and celebrating our tradition of constitutional citizenship - a tradition which is intimately tied to our heritage of civil rights. To read IPC's resources on birthright citizenship, see:

National Conversations on African, African American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino Migrations to and in the U.S.

A four-part series of teleconference briefings on timely and critical analyses of migration, race, and identity.

The United Nations has declared 2011 as the “International Year for Peoples of African Descent”. Ten years ago, landmark recommendations were made at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban South Africa. In a four-part series of teleconferences that looks at the span of Black presence in the U.S. over the centuries, we will examine the unique migration experiences of the African Diaspora within the context of U.S. history and the current debate over immigration. The series brings provocative frameworks and analyses into the discussion about race and immigration that are seldom considered.

Speaker: Rhonda Magee, Professor, University of Francisco School of Law

Ms. Magee examines the experience of the first Africans to the U.S. as an immigration experience, albeit forced migration. In a paper she wrote on the subject, she maintains the uniqueness of the experience of Africans sold in the cross-Atlantic slave trade and makes a comparative analysis of the similarities of African slavery with current forms of bondage and enforced labor.

Population Bulletin Update: Latinos in the United States 2010 by Rogelio Saenz Population Reference Bureau (December 2010): Latinos are increasingly shaping the demographic makeup of the United States. While the U.S. population grew by 36 percent between 1980 and 2009, the Latino population more than tripled, increasing from 14.6 million to nearly 48.4 million.1 Latinos accounted for slightly more than 40 percent of the roughly 81 million people added to the U.S. population over the past 30 years. The influence of the Latino population will only grow in coming decades, and mostly through natural increase, not immigration. For the Update, see Download Latinos-update2010[1].

Not sure the Greek government heard how well the U.S./Mexico border fence was "working" but the immigration news from Europe today is that Greece is considering building a fence along a section of its border with Turkey. Good luck Greece!

Ivy Suriyopas, Staff Attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, will be speaking on the New York Anti-Trafficking Network's panel in honor of National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, 2011, from 6 to 8 pm at 123 William St., 16th Fl. NY, NY, at the Urban Justice Center. Please join Ms. Suriyopas and other human trafficking experts in a dialogue about U.S. efforts to combat sex and labor trafficking. See http://nyatn.wordpress.com/nyatn-events/ for more info about this event, and find out more about AALDEF's anti-trafficking work at http://aaldef.org/programs/anti-trafficking-initiative/.

World Migration Report 2010: The Future of Migration: Building Capacities for Change identifies key migration dynamics and trends, citing, among other main drivers, declining population rates in industrialized countries coupled with stagnant job growth in the developing world; income disparities; poverty and conflict; and globalization. World Migration 2010: The Future of Migration: Building Capacities for Change, is the fifth report in International Organization for Migration's series. This year’s report focuses on the future of migration and the capacities that will be required by States, regional and international organizations, civil society and the private sector to manage migration successfully over the coming decades. Ten years ago, the first World Migration Report 2000 reported that there were 150 million migrants. Now, the number of migrants has grown to 214 million, and the figure could rise to 405 million by 2050, as a result of growing demographic disparities, the effects of environmental change, new global political and economic dynamics, technological revolutions and social networks.